Comments on Mutualist Blog: Free Market Anti-Capitalism: Weekly Digest

Alright then, in that case let me name instead the...

2006-08-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

Alright then, in that case let me name instead the light bulb, the printing press, and longer lifespan.

And I resent the implication that the steam-engine was invented primarily for the use of transporting fossil fuels. It's my understanding that the first industrial application was in pumping water from mineshafts. And even if we assume arguendo that it's primary use in practice for a long time was fossil fuel transport, I still think the invention of a technology that involves any kind of affordable, long-range transport of goods in a free-market context has some considerable benefits.

Curiously enough, and pretty obviously not by coin...

2006-08-19T00:40:00.000-07:00

Curiously enough, and pretty obviously not by coincidence, all three of those examples represent solutions to problems that were themselves products of progress.

Steam engines came in to supplement a shortage of animal transport during the Napoleonic Wars, and a need to transport fossil fuel long distances to urban centres.

Polio vaccines are necessary to prevent large scale outbreaks of Polio, rare outside modern urban environments (there used to be much milder attacks, earlier in life).

Homiogenised milk is necessary in order to help preserve milk, not a big issue if you live close to the suppliers.

I don't agree with Pollard on the primitivist stuf...

2006-08-17T22:01:00.000-07:00

I don't agree with Pollard on the primitivist stuff, either (likewise Kirk Sale). But whatever his position on the merits of hunter-gatherer society, he doesn't really treat it as a model of social organization we can return to. He sees centralized industrial society, rather, as something to be worked through on the way to a fairly high level of decentralized technology.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Pollard thi...

2006-08-16T15:41:00.000-07:00

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Pollard thinks that life was better when we were cavemen:

These are all, of course, lies, designed to keep us all from realizing the truth: That life was simpler, richer, happier and more resilient in 'prehistoric' gatherer-hunter times and has, with some major ups and downs, been getting worse for most ever since; that unconstrained growth is unsustainable and threatens all life on Earth, and as a consequence the sixth great extinction of life on our planet is already well underway

I'll be the first to say that many aspects of modern civilization are defective, including stalinist centralization and frequent war, but that doesn't mean life was better when we were hunter-gatherers. Surely the steam-engine, the polio vaccine, and homogenized milk have had some good effect...